This invention relates to improvements in an automatically operated record player system including a tone arm, a turntable etc. controlled by electronic circuits.
Recently, gramophone records or discs themselves and pickup cartridges serving as transducers have been rapidly improved with respect to performance and also the signal-to-noise ratio, performance with respect to irregular rotations etc. have been much improved by the use of electric motors for directly driving the turntable. Under these circumstances high fidelity record player systems have been brought to market one after another. Almost all of such conventional high fidelity record player systems have included a pickup cartridge adapted to be put in its operating position by manually operating an associated tone arm and improvements in their operating capabilities have been few. On the other hand, although automatically operated record player systems laying more or less stress on the operating capability have been brought to market, they have been mechanically controlled resulting in the application of a harmful lateral pressure on the tone arm when it is maintained in its operating position. Thus the users have tended not to accept them as high class record players.
As well known, the reason for which such mechanically controlled record player systems have not yet gained acceptance with the users is that the pickup cartridge used with high class record player systems has included a stylus applying an extremely low pressure to the particular gramophone disc and therefore having a high compliance in on effort to achieve better performance. However, this also comes in question when the users manually operate automatic record player systems. More specifically, mechanical stresses occurring at the needle point of the stylus and on a mating disc are different among different users and on different occasions. Such stresses will never have small values. It would therefore be very desirable to provide an automatically operated record player system causing only small mechanical stresses at a needle point of the stylus thereof and on the associated gramophone disc as compared with the manual operation performed by the user and which always maintains such stresses constant.